Complementary businesses

Nick Carr has a good point this morning when he says that “everything that happens on the internet is complementary to the company’s core business” when talking about Google. However, Nick continues to argue that this is highly unusual, and probably not of much use to other companies. I tend to disagree.

Let’s take Intuit as an example. Yesterday, Intuit announced the acquisition of Homestead Technologies, a company that provides small business website creation and e-commerce. I see this acquisition as complementary to Intuit’s business. If Intuit can get more people to setup shop online, that increases the number of potential customers for their accounting and finance software. In fact, it would make sense for Intuit to give away free online storefronts, because their core strength is in the financial software that they could offer and plug-in directly to these new storefronts. Perhaps this is their plan. If it is, they are a little late to the game…